


The Order of Albertus Magnus

by thedevilchicken



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood As Lube, Blood Drinking, Collars, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Knives, M/M, Masturbation, Vampire Bites, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: McCullum asks Reid for a favour. This doesn't go to plan.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 5
Kudos: 83
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	The Order of Albertus Magnus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



"You want me to do _what_?" Reid said. 

It wasn't an unexpected reaction, if McCullum was honest about it. Even before he'd let himself into Reid's room at Pembroke and loitered there, lying in wait for his unending sodding rounds to end, he'd known what he'd say when presented with the question. Reid didn't like it, probably half because it sounded fucking ludicrous and half because the idiot who was asking him to do it looked like he didn't like it, either. That was the truth of it: McCullum didn't like the idea any more than Reid did. He just knew how necessary it was, whether they liked it or not. 

"You heard me," McCullum said. He was sitting on the edge of Reid's desk, on top of a pile of papers that his arse was probably crumpling up to high heaven; he usually found some annoyance to make of himself whenever he visited the leech's office, whether that was taking half his supply of bandages without checking with him first or using his workbench to oil his crossbow, though he supposed if he was asking a favour it might've been best not to act like an ass to him on purpose. Of course, _not_ acting like an ass to him on purpose might have said more about his levels of desperation than he'd have liked it to.

Reid leaned back against his workbench and crossed his arms over his chest. He'd just taken off his white coat and hung it up behind the door and underneath he was in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat - McCullum was fairly sure that was the most casual anyone ever saw him these days, swanky sod that he was. 

"I suppose I was hoping I'd got the wrong end of the stick," Reid said, then he made a bemused face that under any other circumstances McCullum might have found hilarious. "For the love of God, McCullum, why are you asking me?"

McCullum shrugged. "You're a leech," he said.

Reid sighed, which McCullum knew was entirely for effect given he didn't actually need to breathe. Then he said, "That's really not an explanation, is it."

McCullum supposed it wasn't. What he wanted to say was, _I'll find someone else_ , but he knew Reid would just arch one fucking sardonic eyebrow and ask him, _Can you?_ and the fact of it was that no, he couldn't find someone else. He was acquainted with a few other leeches, yes, but he for damn sure wasn't going to go hat in hand to Jessica the Limehouse madam who kept her borough scrupulously free of other Ekons more as part of her general business model than from some deeper moral compass, or Billy Beal who worked the docks and fed Priwen information so they'd let him live. Even if McCullum had trusted them as far as he could throw them, Jessica's help would've cost more than he could pay for and Billy, well. Billy was such a flimsy excuse for a leech that McCullum could've offed him barehanded, and he needed something a lot more _substantial_ than that. 

He stood up. Two pieces of paper fluttered to the floor as he did so and Reid made a face and flinched toward them like he'd have liked to pick them up and have order returned to his office, but he really didn't want to give McCullum the satisfaction of knowing his casual indifference to his belongings bothered him. McCullum thought about picking them up himself, but he really didn't want Reid to think he was desperate. He was, though: Priwen's resources had been stretched so fucking thin by the Skal epidemic that they were barely hanging on, and what the Order of Albertus Magnus was offering them was too good to ignore just because he didn't want to ask a favour. 

"Look, the Albertians are a bunch of pretentious pricks at the best of times," McCullum said, "but I had to sell three guns last week so we could feed all of Priwen. If I keep on like that, we either run out of guns or we run out of people. We need both."

Reid crinkled his brow. "And the... _Albertians_. They can assist you?"

"Yeah. Maybe, yeah. It's not outside the bounds of possibility."

"What's in it for them?"

"Albertians don't fight; Priwen do. Simple as that."

"So, Priwen will be their guard dogs?"

McCullum scowled. He jabbed his fingernails into his palms to keep from swearing colourfully or calling Reid something more uncharitable than usual, or both if he was feeling adventurous. "If that's what it takes, yes." 

"And you need me because...?"

"They need to know we're serious."

"That's still not an explanation."

McCullum bared his teeth for a moment, which he supposed wasn't half as terrifying as when Reid did it; frankly, though, in the time since they'd met that particular trick had long since lost its terror - that was, he supposed, the most terrifying thing about it. He blew out a breath. He ran a hand over his hair, and over his throat, and Reid's eyes followed it, which he had to admit was marginally more worrying. 

"The Albertians keep pet leeches," he said. "They like to call themselves scientists, if you can believe that. They study them."

"And you need a pet of your own to join their little club?"

"It's a measuring contest." The look on Reid's face told him he didn't need to explain that particular concept. "Some shite about demonstrating your power. If you can keep a strong leech on a leash, you get to sit at the table." 

"And how exactly am I meant to demonstrate my strength?" McCullum raised his brows. Reid tightened his arms over his chest. "You want me to fight, don't you," he said.

"Yes. Honestly? Yes."

"They have some sort of champion, and I'm supposed to defeat them?"

"Yes."

"You know this is ridiculous, don't you?"

McCullum's mouth twisted wryly. "Yes," he said, because he did know. He really did know. And what Reid wasn't saying was that if McCullum would just stop acting like an idiot and accept the money he'd repeatedly offered him, he wouldn't have to make deals with shady pseudo-scientific organisations who kept leeches as twisted status symbols with some vague promise of a cure one day. It was good that he wasn't saying it, too, because they both knew he'd refuse. Fucked up as it was, he'd rather be in bed with the human version of the Ascalon Club than let an Ekon fund Priwen, though apparently he wasn't above asking for his help in other ways. One option only needed him for one night, and the other would tie him in indefinitely. 

Still, as much as he didn't like the plan, and as much as he knew Reid didn't like it, he also knew he wouldn't say no. He was always so damnably accommodating, as if helping Geoffrey McCullum and the Guard of Priwen could absolve him of all his prior leechy sins. Apparently Reid knew it, too, because he _didn't_ say no - he rubbed his face with one hand, pinching his top lip over his fangs with his thumb and forefinger the way he did sometimes, usually when he'd just been asked to do something that relied on abilities he absolutely didn't like to use. McCullum had found him handy in a hunt or two over the two or three years since they'd first met, but he knew Reid hated using his Ekon powers in earnest; he preferred a pistol he'd brought back from the war and a thick club of a sabre that McCullum had had to sit him down and show him how to sharpen. Maybe the gesture was just to remind himself he really wasn't human anymore and going to political meetings between covert anti-vampire societies to have fist fights with supernatural creatures was, in fact, something for which he had the general capacity.

"Fine," Reid said, after a tense moment. "When exactly is this meeting?"

"Tuesday. We'll pick you up at midnight." 

"Is there a dress code?"

McCullum laughed. "Just wear something you don't mind getting drenched in blood," he replied. And as Reid made a face, McCullum made for the door. When he looked back by the fire escape that led down into the street below, Reid was already crouching by the desk to retrieve the fallen papers. If he hadn't known he was a leech and not a man, in that moment he might not actually have noticed; there was something still so human about the way he moved sometimes, but then he looked up and caught him watching. Reid's light irises were surrounded by red, and they both knew what that meant.

Sometimes it was easy to forget what Reid was. He knew that was all the more reason to be on his guard.

\---

Two nights later, he came back to Reid's room; he was ready, sitting there at his desk wearing a familiar three-piece suit almost as if he wasn't aware he was heading to a very likely very bloody fight. He pushed his chair back when McCullum entered and said, "Shall we?" but McCullum waved him back down into the seat. 

"One thing before we go," he said, and he produced the collar from inside his coat. It was a narrow silver band with just enough flex to it that McCullum could pull it open in his hands, with a silver leash on a ring that slipped over one end and moved around it freely. Reid raised his eyebrows at it - then at McCullum - as he approached across the room. 

"So I need to be your leech on a leash in a literal sense," he said, drily, as he let McCullum tilt his head this way and that to get the collar pushed on around his neck, which was a disconcerting feeling for McCullum to say the least. He stood behind him after, and screwed down four tiny silver bolts to keep the thing in place, though they both knew the bolts would shear so easily that McCullum could have torn it off himself, never mind Reid with his suspicious strength. Reid's skin was cold against his fingers, not that that was unexpected, and the collar itself slipped down under the neck of Reid's shirt and out of sight. Reid grimaced as he pulled the long silver leash out between two shirt buttons and let it hang over his jacket, the end of it dangling into his lap. He looked down at it, with a look on his face like he was wondering how it was his life had come to this. 

"You could sell this and feed Priwen for a month," Reid said, giving the leash a tug. 

"It's from the Albertians or we'd have sold it by now," McCullum replied. 

Reid nodded. He stood. And they left together, no other witticisms about the situation left to share. 

The Order of Albertus Magnus had its current headquarters in a big stone-faced building on a square in Bloomsbury, behind tall iron railings and a line of well-kept green privet grown higher than Reid was, never mind McCullum. The men at the gate who checked their credentials were human but inside, every ninth or tenth body was an Ekon in a shiny silver collar. Their leader was there, a man named Thomas Westbrook - he was maybe sixty years old, grey-haired, glasses, nice suit but not as nice as Reid's, and McCullum wondered for an absurd second if he should've told Reid to dress down for the occasion. As it was, though, Westbrook didn't seem to notice Reid's pretty suit as he shook McCullum's hand, and he made a point of telling him his associates outside would be welcome to come in, just so he knew he knew they were there. Frankly, though, he'd have been surprised if he hadn't known.

"I'd rather just get started," McCullum said, to which Westbrook nodded sagely. Then, he turned his attention to Reid. 

"So, I take it this is your Ekon?" he said, as he looked him up and down with a creepily appraising eye. 

McCullum raised his left hand; there was a loop of silver chain around his wrist that connected to the collar bolted in place around Reid's neck. "He's mine," he replied, though he felt a blush threatening to creep up into his cheeks as he said it. He felt an uncomfortable flush of warmth somewhere lower, too, and hoped Reid wasn't watching where his blood was flowing to at that precise moment, lest he get a rather strong impression of a fact McCullum had spent quite some time denying. Then he jutted his chin to the leech by Westbrook's shoulder there in the posh place's posh foyer, underneath the posh chandelier. "And that's yours?"

The Ekon was big. Not Vulkod big, but one of the biggest men McCullum had ever seen who wasn't. He looked like he was at least five eights giant, nearly seven feet tall and towering over the lot of them - even Reid, who was infuriatingly tall at the best of times. And, for a second, as Westbrook showed him the chain that led from his wrist to the leech's pretty engraved collar, he felt a stab of worry. He wasn't sure if that was for his plans or for the Ekon he'd not quite hired for the night.

"Yes," Westbrook said. "This is Wladek. Does yours have a name?"

McCullum scrunched his nose as he considered how to reply to that. He didn't want to give Reid's surname and leave him completely traceable, supposing Westbrook and his Albertians hadn't traced him already, but the idea of calling him by his given name almost made him recoil in horror. So, in the end, he shrugged. "No," he replied. "I don't name pets." 

"Very wise, I'm sure," Westbrook said. He chuckled good-naturedly and gestured to the door by the stairs that evidently led outside. "Shall we?"

Through the door was an open air courtyard, bounded on all four sides by the building's three storeys so nothing that might happen there was overlooked. In the centre, McCullum thought there'd probably once been a fountain that they'd pulled out and paved over in a not very fine style, and around the exterior of the courtyard, in front of the brickwork, rose a cage of thick metal bars. There were pillars here and there supporting the ironwork of the cage's top, and McCullum realised they'd just walked in through that cage's only entrance - and only exit - not that he supposed Reid would find it much of a challenge to break out of. Westbrook slipped the chain from around his wrist and let it dangle down his huge leech's front; its end fell to his knees and when McCullum did the same, the end of it came to Reid's shins, a good six inches lower. The two of them looked at Westbrook's Ekon, who was beginning to remove his shirt, and McCullum felt that same stab of entirely unwelcome worry. They looked at each other, and the expression on Reid's face said he was more concerned about stripping to the waist where people could see him than he was about the fight; McCullum, somehow, refrained from rolling his eyes. 

Two neatly-dressed servants appeared with baskets to hold the Ekons' clothes; Reid took off his jacket, his tie, waistcoat, shirt, the cotton vest he was wearing underneath it, and placed it all into one of the baskets. Westbrook's Ekon took off his shoes and socks, too, and stood there barefoot on the paving stones, so Reid rather reluctantly did the same - McCullum looked at him, standing there in the half light of the moon and the city and the lamps shining out from inside the building, barefoot and stripped to the waist, all pale skin and a smattering of dark hair across his chest and his abdomen that led down underneath his belt. McCullum had always known Reid was a little slimmer than he was through the shoulders and hips, but his shirtlessness showed he wasn't without muscle - whether he'd been given to exercise before the war or the war had helped his physique wasn't a question McCullum particularly wanted to ask, but he suspects now that it was at least partly that question in the back of his mind, and his fucking distraction over Reid's bare skin, that meant he didn't see the trap before it sprung. 

Westbrook clapped his hands and everyone left the courtyard except for the two bare-chested leeches, including McCullum. One of the servants closed the thick metal door and bolted it shut. And Westbrook ushered McCullum toward a patio door full of panes of glass behind bars that overlooked the fight. It was then that he knew that they had him, when the two Priwen lookouts Westbrook had told him he knew about were marched in through the door at gunpoint, and the two he hadn't mentioned came in, too. Then someone cold-cocked him to the ground. 

He remembers seeing Reid see what was happening inside and how, in a moment, he went from slightly embarrassed toff trying to hide his awkwardness at having people see him shirtless to...something else entirely. Westbrook's Ekon attacked, but Reid was faster, and and Reid was stronger, and Reid pulled the leech's fucking heart straight from its chest and threw it at the window before it could even land a blow. The leech fell, and the heart hit the ground not three feet from McCullum's face, splattering blood on the far side of the glass. Then, Reid came for him. 

"Don't," Westbrook said, and in the reflection in the window McCullum could see the gun in the bastard's hand that was pointed at his head. He could see the guns pointed at his men. Reid saw them, too, and he stopped in front of the window with Westbrook's leech's blood still dripping from his bloody arm. 

"If you would like Mr. McCullum to live through the night, Dr. Reid, you will give yourself up," Westbrook said, and McCullum remembers laughing against the rather nice rug under his cheek, bitterly, loudly, because he knew he should've seen it coming - the deal had been too good to pass up, which meant it was also too good to be true, and all they'd really wanted from him was Jonathan Reid served on a silver-collared platter. What they'd wanted was the strongest leech in London, or in England, or maybe all of Europe, the strongest one that McCullum had seen for a very long time at any rate, and he'd given him straight to them. But the cage wouldn't hold Reid, and if they thought that holding a gun to the head of the Guard of Priwen would give them leverage with him...

"He doesn't give a fuck about--" McCullum said, and got a boot to his ribs for his trouble. He grunted. And the sound Reid made, disgusted and furious and like he'd have enjoyed tearing out the throat of every person there, didn't prepare McCullum in the slightest for the fact that he said, "Fine. _Fine_. Let him go."

"Reid--" he said, trying to push himself up, but they knocked him back down, and then they knocked him out. And as his vision swam and quickly started turning black, he saw three men pushing Reid down to the ground like they had any physical power over him at all. They jabbed a needle straight into his neck, though what was in it he had no idea. And when McCullum woke an hour later, face down in a park in who even knew which part of London, head throbbing, he knew if he went back to the Albertians' house they'd already be gone. They'd have taken Reid with them. And he was the stupid fuck who'd let them. It was galling. Never mind Reid, he'd have torn their throats out personally if he'd had the means to get hold of them, and the only consolation he could dredge up from the depths was he supposed the beauty of the double-cross had been in the fact that up until that moment, it really had been their ritual.

Knowing they'd have gone didn't stop him checking. Once he'd found his way back to the dockland warehouse Priwen had been using as its base for the past few months, he gathered some of his people and he went back there. to Bloomsbury The place was deserted; there were no people, barely any furniture, no papers, no clues, only the thick metal cage lining the courtyard and a smear of blood against the paving stones where Westbrook's Ekon's heart had been. It twisted at something inside him when he thought about that, the fucking vicious look on Reid's usually calm face, the blood on his skin. If he thought about it too hard, he could barely fucking breathe because honestly, he believed with every fibre of him that Reid would have killed them all to free him. 

As much as Reid hated those powers of his, McCullum had no doubt that he'd have used each and every one of them. 

\---

The problem was, when the hunt for Jonathan Reid started in earnest, there was no trail to follow. 

The house had belonged to one of the Order of Albertus Magnus' former members who had recently died; there was no other property owned in his name, and Westbrook's home was, while not empty, inhabited only by his domestic staff who seemed quite genuine when they said they had no idea where he'd gone or who with or what for. They remembered his big foreign friend, Wladek the Ekon, but they couldn't say where he'd come from, only that they'd only seen him at night and were forbidden to enter his room down in the cellar. When McCullum went in, breaking down the door with two of his men, he understood why: it was set up like one of Reid's operating theatres at Pembroke, all needles and scalpels and empty glass phials, and a reek of bleach that couldn't quite hide the blood. It turned McCullum's stomach, and his stomach those days was damned hard to turn.

The Order had no property registered to it, because the Order technically didn't exist on paper. The Brotherhood of Saint Paul's Stole couldn't give them any clues when McCullum reluctantly reached out to creepy Usher Talltree - or stormed into his dingy little sanctuary under Temple Church and asked not very nicely, truce between their organisations be thoroughly damned. There was _nothing_ he could find. Even the company that had built the cage couldn't help him. All he could do was call in the favours he was owed in other orders, or favours owed to Eldritch once upon a time, and those wouldn't be quick in bearing fruit. McCullum had no fucking patience, not in the beginning, and his lack of fucking patience wore thin.

In the end, it took four months to find him, and not only did it turn out he'd been in London all along but he'd possibly never even left Bloomsbury. One of McCullum's contacts sent the address of some kind of private members club and though he'd have liked to have stormed straight into it, gun in one hand and sword in the other, he had some of his best people go there and surveille it first. A week of comings and goings and they finally caught sight of Westbrook; three more days and one of the maids confirmed there were secret rooms under the building, cellars like a warren, odd sounds, clothes to be laundered that were stained in blood or maybe worse. McCullum didn't doubt it once he'd heard all there was to hear: if he didn't find Reid there in person, he was positive he'd find someone who could lead him straight to him. Maybe then his own irritable morals could settle the fuck back down to their normal levels and he could stop teaching Priwen that some leeches might actually matter.

When they went in, it was noon and the sun was high so the Albertians' pet leeches couldn't give them too much help, if any. They corralled the club's servants and the Albertians that they found outside in the caged-in courtyard, at gunpoint, and then went on exploring with swords drawn. McCullum couldn't help but wonder if Reid would be behind each door they opened as they made their way through the bedrooms and the bathrooms and the studies and the libraries, through the dining rooms and lounges and kitchens, and went down into the cellars underneath. The first was filled with wines but beyond the shelves was a door that led deeper, down another flight of stairs into the dark. McCullum led the way down the neatly tiled corridors, grim and stark like a hospital, like a laboratory, like the Pembroke morgue that he'd visited more than once over the years. There were steel trolleys, trays, dishes, microscopes, things McCullum recognised from Reid's workbenches in the room he'd so repeatedly broken into but that didn't know the names of. There were bodies lying on tables, too, cut open, dissected, specimens in jars. He checked each one with his heart in his throat to make sure it wasn't Reid. Somehow, the Albertians had managed to create a place even more fucked up than McCullum had ever imagined.

It wasn't the last room they came to but it wasn't far away. At the end of the deepest corridor, there were three live Ekons, or at least as live as you could ever call a leech; his men took care of the woman in one room while McCullum put an end to poor Billy Beal who he found in the next, wild and fucking starving and chained tight to a wall. It was sad, really. In all that time since Reid's disappearance, he'd barely had time to spare a thought for his old neighbourhood informant. That didn't help discredit the theory that, in fact, not all leeches were created equal.

In the next, though, he found Reid. He was lying on the tiled floor, naked, bloody incisions in the crooks of his arms and by his wrists and marching down his thighs, some dried and some still shiny in the light that flooded in from the corridor outside. He didn't stir when the door opened, or when McCullum went in. He didn't move when McCullum nudged his knee with the toe of his boot. If he hadn't known he was a leech and didn't need to breathe, McCullum might have assumed he was already dead and gone; as it was, he knelt down on the blood-smeared floor beside him and caught a glint of the silver chain that still hung there from the collar bolted around his throat. He wrapped the chain around his palm. He tugged. And slowly, Reid's eyes fluttered open. They didn't focus, but they seemed to try to. And when he opened his mouth, he didn't even have the energy to take a breath to speak with, let alone actually make words come out. 

Ordinarily, he might've said something vaguely reassuring, but he wasn't sure he had anything reassuring to say. He'd been trying to justify spending Priwen's limited resources on tracking down a leech for the best part of the past four months, though it had turned out at least some of his people understood his compulsion; Reid had helped some of them personally, or they'd found out he was helping finance Nurse Crane's clinic and the clinic had helped them, or he'd helped a friend or a loved one, roaming about the city like a lunatic pill dispensary the way he did. McCullum pulled off his coat and spent the next couple of minutes swearing a blue streak while he pushed and pulled Reid's limp body into it and buttoned it up down the front just so he wouldn't have to haul him naked. Then he lifted him, fairly sure he'd given himself a hernia in the process, slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes borrowed from the docks. Reid wasn't light, for all that height, and he couldn't help at all. And when McCullum appeared at the top of the stairs, five of his people all started talking at once, asking what they were meant to do now; McCullum handed Reid off to a couple of their more burly men and told them to take him back to base, and not let him die along the way. He had things to take care of where he was, after all. All he could do was make sure they kept Reid out of the sun on the way outside and then leave them to it. 

It was dark by the time he got back and strode inside, not that that made any difference where he was going. They had a cellar there in the warehouse, too, though it wasn't as fancy as the Albertians' labs, and when he went down into it he winced at the smell of damp and earth and the bleach-blood tinge to the air on top of it. There were no lights down there so he carried a lamp, and at the door he paused, drew back the bolt, then went inside. His heart hammered on the way in. He fucking hated that it did.

That was where they kept leeches while they questioned them: a small, grim room with no way out but that one door and a floor that was more hard-packed earth than tiles. They'd dumped Reid onto it and he was lying there still in McCullum's favourite - _only_ \- coat. From the look of the ground and its lack of scuffing, he hadn't moved a muscle since they'd left him there. He was still bleeding, thinly, from a wound high up on one thigh that was exposed where the coat had rucked up. So McCullum pulled off his scarf from around his neck and once he'd gone down on his knees in the dirt like the leech's personal Priwen valet, he wrapped it around Reid's leg like a makeshift bandage. And when he looked at Reid's face, he saw he couldn't even keep his eyes open. He could barely move at all.

McCullum knew he didn't have much longer. He _knew_ Reid would be gone by morning if he didn't do something about it, and there was really only one thing that he _could_ do, short of hunting rats and hoping he made it back before Reid kicked the proverbial bucket. So he took a breath and did something he absolutely knew was a terrible idea. He sat down on his arse on the floor, dirt on his trousers be damned since they'd had a good deal worse in their lifetime, and he pulled Reid's head up onto one of his thighs. He tilted Reid's chin up and he opened his mouth and fuck, Reid's mouth was cold, but not cold like a corpse, though he supposed it said nothing good about his chosen career that he knew what corpses felt like. There was something different about it, as McCullum ran his thumb over Reid's tongue that shifted just a fraction against his skin, as he traced his teeth, pressed the pad of his thumb to the point of one fang. He'd pulled out Ekon teeth before, but he'd never done anything like this, cradling a leech's head as he felt up its fucking teeth. It should've turned his stomach. He was half surprised that it did something else to him instead, lower down and much more shameful. 

He rolled up his sleeve. He had a butterfly knife in his boot in case of emergencies; he slid it out, flicked it open, and pressed it into the newly bared skin of his left arm, letting the sharp tip bite and then draw blood. He tilted that arm down and he let the blood drip off the angle of his wrist and the first few drops hit Reid's chin, getting in his unkempt beard instead of in his mouth, so he brought his wrist down lower, closer to his lips like that wasn't certifiably fucking ludicrous. His blood dripped, one droplet splattering against Reid's bottom lip, but after that they started hitting his tongue instead. Reid swallowed. He licked his lips and when he opened his mouth again, McCullum's blood was on his teeth, smeared pink over both his bright white fangs. He should have hated it. He should have been repulsed. But fuck, he had Reid's head resting heavily against his thigh, and the fingers of his free hand in Reid's lengthening hair, and his blood was slowly drip-drip-dripping into Reid's wide open mouth. And though he was doing it to save the leech's life, that didn't change the fact that his balls felt tight and his prick was paying close attention to the situation. Much closer attention than he would have liked. He could feel himself stiffening, and all he could do was ignore it.

When Reid started to stir, he knew that was enough. It was more than enough, really - sense said he shouldn't have done it at all, and he should've just finished him off like he'd done Billy Beal, a quick slash with his sword then drag him out into the sunlight just to be completely sure. It might have been kinder in the long run, too, because from what he knew about leeches, things would get worse before they'd get better. Reid would be ravenous soon, almost uncontrollably so, though he'd probably also be weak as a kitten and locked inside a filthy cellar wearing nothing but an ill-fitting coat that belonged to his vaguest of pseudo-allies. He wouldn't like that, McCullum thought, Mr. Prim and Proper, wearing his dirty coat. _Dr._ Prim and Proper: he told himself the doctor part mattered, and that was why he'd saved him, and that was why he was _feeding_ him. Priwen had had more than one probably avoidable death since Reid's entirely avoidable disappearance and if they'd had one or two, Pembroke had probably had twenty. Fifty. Who knew how many. And the strange irony of it was that if the Albertians had actually agreed to the alliance they'd proposed, chances were Reid would have helped their studies willingly. As far as McCullum could tell, he was more valuable as a scientist than as a lab rat. As far as McCullum could tell, he wasn't the only one who'd fucked up.

He pressed his handkerchief to the cut in his forearm to stop the blood and as he was about to move, Reid's eyes opened. He'd never been quite that close to him before, at least not without an argument in progress, and he watched his irises shift as he began to focus. Reid frowned faintly. He took a hitching, awkward breath, like even that was almost too much effort. Then he passed out again before he could say a single word and McCullum left quickly, thinking it was just as well he hadn't managed to say anything that they'd both regret. Any more than he already regretted the entire night, at least. 

He bolted the door behind him and upstairs in his room, which had likely used to be the foreman's office, he stretched out on his bed, and he pushed his bloody hand straight down the front of his trousers because seriously, what the fuck had he just done? His cock was still half hard and it took all of three strokes to get him all the way into erection. He pushed his trousers down over his hips and threw back the sheets and lay there, masturbating like he had no goddamn self-control at all. Possibly, all things considered, he hadn't.

And as he stroked, he told himself he wasn't thinking about Jonathan Reid's red eyes. As he came, he told himself he wasn't thinking about the sharpness of his teeth against his thumb, or the fact that he'd left him with his blood drying in his beard. 

He told himself he wasn't, but he definitely was. 

\---

When he woke, he had other more pressing concerns that weren't the leech in his cellar, like the fact that Thomas Westbrook hadn't been amongst the Albertians they'd taken. Somewhat reassuringly, that meant he didn't see him until almost twenty-four full hours had passed, and that felt almost close to sanity.

Six men and women plus two of their pet Ekons and the clubhouse's staff really couldn't have constituted the extent of the Order of Albertus Magnus, even small as it was. And then, of course, there were Priwen's other ongoing investigations and the fact that they had fuck all in the coffers. McCullum had sold some of Reid's lab equipment on the understanding that if they didn't find him then he wouldn't need it anyway, and a couple of knick-knacks he'd found in Reid's desk drawers, and his own best pocket knife that had belonged to his brother once, and they took some of the things they found in the Albertians' second goddamned Bloomsbury house that they might be able to use or sell but that day, that early evening, he sat down with his two lieutenants and the owner of the Bloomsbury clubhouse to have a conversation. They could keep their captives just as easily in Bloomsbury as by the docks, they decided. The club had more than enough space for the thirty-five remaining Priwen, and they could all be warm and fed for the winter at the very least. And with all the Albertians' shady comings and goings via the staff entrance and a passage that led in through the sewers, no one would necessarily notice that the club's clientele had changed. 

He moved Reid that night, hauling the gigantic bastard mostly by himself, and when he set him back in the cell where the Albertians had held him, he couldn't help but feel a twist of guilt somewhere deep in his gut. Reid barely seemed aware of the world at all, however, so perhaps that guilt was even more misplaced than he'd thought it was. McCullum had a mattress brought down for him, at least, feeling faintly ridiculous for giving a damn about the leech's comfort, especially given the fact the next thing that he did was manacle him to the wall with the conveniently-placed equipment. Then he took off his jacket and he rolled up his sleeve and he opened up his arm again, half an inch below the first cut. If he'd maybe felt ludicrous before, he definitely felt it then.

He fed him. Not much, not even enough to make himself feel close to lightheaded, but he fed him just like he'd done the previous night. He ran his thumb over Reid's bottom lip, smudged with his own blood, then sucked his skin clean of it. And as he moved his arm away and stopped the flow of blood, Reid strained upward slightly, wearily, like unconsciously trying to chase after it. 

"Trust you to be a greedy fuck, Reid," McCullum said, but there really wasn't any venom to it. He just patted Reid's cold cheek and shuffled away to leave him there, still wearing his coat and nothing but. The coat _and the collar_ , he supposed, and he supposed he'd have to deal with that.

Of course, Reid wearing his coat meant he didn't actually possess a coat himself. And when one of the servants pointed out that they'd stowed some unfamiliar clothing in a linen closet, McCullum, had it sent up to his room - Westbrook's room as was. The coat wasn't a perfect fit, he thought, as he looked at himself in the mirror; the sleeves were an inch too long and the hem came down a bit too low, but it would do for the time being. And when he stripped naked to give himself a wash in real hot water for the first time in a good long while, when he was towelling himself dry, his gaze wandered to Reid's other clothes. When he came, cock in hand, kneeling on his borrowed bed, he was wearing Reid's shirt unbuttoned against his otherwise bare skin. He should have known better, but apparently he didn't. All he could say was it was better to let his idiot streak out in private than in front of the whole Guard of Priwen.

It was four nights later when Reid managed to say _thank you_ for the first time, his voice like a rusty goddamn door blowing in the breeze but McCullum supposed he hadn't had much occasion to use it over the past four months he'd been banged up. Then Reid closed his eyes again and McCullum found himself sitting there a while longer with the fingers of one hand pressed to the weak pulse in Reid's cold neck. He'd never understood why leeches had a heartbeat, blood pressure, human things like that. Somehow, that night, Reid's was almost comforting. But, of course, that was the calm before the storm. 

He remembers the sounds Reid made the next night, when he fed him, like a wounded fucking animal. He remembers how Reid moved the night after that, shifting restlessly, the chains of his manacles clinking against the small cell's tiles. The next night, when Reid looked at him, he knew all he saw was the blood in his veins, but he didn't have the strength to break himself free and take what he wanted. McCullum remembers how he hated that part in particular, seeing Reid like that, so weak and drained that there was nothing but the leech. It should have made it easier to kill him, he thought, but all he really felt was guilt - the Reid he'd known had so much self-control, and it was McCullum's mistake that had robbed him of that. 

It was a bad week. They tried to supplement Reid's diet with the occasional rat but the best thing for him was human blood and even if a few of McCullum's people would have given some of theirs up willingly, he really didn't want to ask them to. Reid was his responsibility, no one else's, and he for damn sure wasn't going to let anyone else see the leech like that, not if he ever wanted anyone to trust him. He fed him nightly, until there were cuts from his own knife like a ladder up the inside of his forearm and Reid's pitiful noises in his head made it surprisingly hard to, well. Get hard. Perhaps that was one small mercy.

But then, sometime in the second week, he let himself in and found Reid sitting up with his back leaning up against the tiled wall. His hands were folded neatly in his lap. His head was resting back and when McCullum entered, his eyes opened. He drew a slow, deliberate breath. 

"McCullum," he said. 

"Reid," he replied. And for the time being, he kept a wary distance.

"They told me you were dead." Reid turned one hand and patted the hem of the coat that stretched over his thigh. "Then I woke up wearing this." Shakily, he raised his hand. He rubbed his mouth with his fingertips. He frowned. His whole expression changed. "Geoffrey, can you tell me why my mouth tastes like your blood?" he asked. "I didn't... Please tell me I didn't bite you." 

McCullum snorted. "Do you think I'd have let you live if you had?" he asked, and Reid smiled tiredly. His head tilted to one side like he was having trouble holding it upright and in the lamplight, the silver collar still bolted there around his neck gave a subdued twinkle. 

"I'm glad to hear that," Reid said. "But that's not an explanation."

McCullum sighed; they were back to that old goddamned chestnut, it appeared, though he couldn't help but feel a stab of optimism that they were back to that. "No, it's not," he conceded, then he took off his jacket. He rolled up his sleeve and, wryly, resignedly, he showed Reid his forearm. 

"You've been feeding me," Reid said. 

"Obviously."

"You didn't have to do that."

"No, I didn't."

He produced his knife from his pocket, flicked open the blade and pressed it to an as yet unscarred stretch of his forearm, hard enough that the skin dimpled but not hard enough to cut. Perhaps he didn't need to, but then again perhaps he did.

"You should really sterilise that blade," Reid said, and McCullum couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it - getting medical advice from a shackled, half-naked leech who he'd been feeding back to health for a fortnight. He was still smiling to himself as he cut his arm, too, but then his smile faded away as he looked over at Reid. His face had turned... _sharp_ , and horrified, his lips parted like he simultaneously wanted to tell him how disgusting that was and also sink his teeth straight into him. McCullum, for the first time in a while, wasn't sure which of those desires would win in a straight fight.

"Are you going to cause trouble if I come over there?" McCullum asked. And Reid swallowed, Reid's nostrils flared like he could smell his blood on the air, Reid balled his hands into fists against his thighs. 

"I don't know," he said, sounding and looking damn near fucking stricken. "I hope not. I hope not. But I don't know."

"Well, at least that's an honest answer," McCullum replied. And he supposed it was yet another bad idea in a long chain of bad ideas that had led him to this point, but given Reid was still so weak...he did it anyway. 

"Lie down," he told him. "Over here," he told him. So Reid did, slowly, crawling, dragging himself closer until he'd reached the extent of his manacles. And McCullum straddled Reid's chest, pinned him there and let the blood drip from his wrist down into Reid's open mouth. Reid's red leech eyes weren't on the blood, though; they were on _him_ , on his face, on his flushed cheeks and then his eyes as he swallowed. He didn't try to struggle, because he likely knew it wouldn't get him far. He didn't ask what the manacles were for, because he likely understood the reason. And when McCullum sat back, still over him, Reid closed his eyes and turned his head away. 

"Do I taste good?" McCullum asked, tartly. 

"Yes," Reid replied. 

"That's disgusting."

"I know."

But back up in his room, naked and hard in his borrowed bed, McCullum couldn't quite convince himself he meant it. 

Reid was back, or at least on his way to it. And McCullum's cock seemed relieved to find that out even if he wasn't so sure himself.

\---

Three more nights like that followed. Each one, he asked Reid if he'd behave himself; on the third, Reid gave the question serious consideration, and then he nodded. 

"Yes," he said. "I will." So McCullum knelt down at his side as he sagged there semi-uselessly against the wall, and he held his bleeding arm out to him. It honestly didn't even seem like a good idea at the time, but that also didn't keep him from doing it.

"If you bite me, Reid, so help me I'll kill you," McCullum said, and then he brought his wrist up to Reid's mouth. He let him lick the fresh knife wound, his cold tongue making its margins sting, and when Reid's hand went up to hold his wrist in closer, his grip was so wholly and entirely feeble that McCullum couldn't find it in himself to be alarmed. The alarming part came after; when he pulled away, and Reid let him go, his blood was smudged across his lips and he'd have liked to have kissed it off him. He'd have liked to have climbed into his lap and felt his bloody teeth with the tip of his tongue. Apparently, all that time in the dark with a sickly leech had robbed him of all good sense.

The next night, he unchained him; Reid rubbed his chafed wrists and said thank you but he didn't really move much otherwise. The next night, he dragged in a steel-framed hospital bed from down the corridor, its legs shrieking against the tiles the whole way; he set the mattress on top and then helped Reid up and onto it. It was only after the fact that he realised just how close to his neck the leech's mouth had been, and a shiver of something reckless went through him when he stroked himself in bed. 

The next night, he left behind a steel instrument table with a lamp sitting on top of it so Reid wouldn't always be in darkness. The next, he left a book and a few of Westbrook's papers in case Reid felt inclined to read, but he still didn't have the energy. McCullum knew what would help, but he couldn't give it to him; Reid knew, too, but he was too polite to ask. Instead, he fed him not even a Petri dish full of blood each time he visited, and maybe it was guilt that led him where he went next, or maybe something more selfish still. He brought a trolley with him with a rattle down the cellar corridor and brought cloths and hot water, soap, and Reid's own clean clothes. Reid let him wash him in the lamplight, lifting his limbs to help as best he could, though that wasn't much. McCullum washed his arms and chest, his slightly bloody hands. He washed his thighs, his calves, the arches of his feet. He had him turn face down on the mattress and ran the cloth down the long line of his spine, from the nape of his neck down to his coccyx. He ran the cloth between his cheeks, against his corpse-cold hole, and wondered if his fingers or his tongue, his cock, would warm it up. His stomach felt tight. His cock started to stiffen. He knew his motives really hadn't been selfless at all. 

When he helped Reid to turn onto his back, when he ran the warm cloth down between Reid's thighs and found him half-hard there, Reid gave him a self-deprecating smile and shifted awkwardly. 

"Fortunately, I don't have enough blood in me to maintain an erection," he said. "Westbrook and his barbaric cronies took most of it." He glanced around the room. "Here, I think, or in the treatment room. They never did say what they took it for." And suddenly, it struck him. Suddenly, McCullum couldn't bear it. He helped Reid to dress, then slung his arm around his shoulder. He hauled him up. He took him upstairs. He wasn't going to make him spend another minute in that room where they'd done to him what they'd done to him - he might have hated leeches, but he wasn't some kind of fucking sadist. 

For convenience to the master if not their pet, Westbrook's leech had occupied a windowless room adjoining his with that room's only access through his bedroom. McCullum took Reid there, up through the cellars, through the kitchens, up the stairs, past questioning eyes whose mouths, fortunately, stayed firmly shut at the warning look on McCullum's face. He took him there, slowly, and he helped him down onto the bed in the small, stark space. Perhaps it wasn't much better than the cell down in the cellar, McCullum thought, but it did have the advantage of not having been involved in Reid's recent bloodletting. That had to count for something, if maybe not too much.

"That's where you sleep?" Reid asked, as he cast his gaze toward the door. 

McCullum glanced that way, too, then back at Reid. There was no mistaking it, really - his clothes were strewn about, sword leaning up against the wall, bed unmade, and the whole thing probably reeked of him if you had a nose like leeches did. "Yes," he replied. "That's where I sleep."

"Are you going to lock me in here?"

"Do I need to?"

Reid shook his head against the pillow. "No, you don't," he said. And, for his sins, McCullum actually believed him. 

When he left the room and closed the door, he didn't lock it. Somehow, when he woke up the next day, he wasn't even surprised that he hadn't been bitten. 

\---

Gradually, Reid strengthened. A few more days and he could stand, albeit shakily. A few more days and he had the energy to neaten up his own damn beard, though McCullum sighed and took the razor in his hand to deal with his too-long hair. 

"Could you perhaps find me something useful to do?" Reid asked, after, as McCullum was brushing the stray hairs away from his shoulders. 

"You want to earn your keep?"

Reid smiled wryly. "Something like that," he said. "And not that you're not excellent company, McCullum, but..."

McCullum clucked his tongue. "I'll see what I can do," he said,. "No promises." But the next night he helped him down into the library. The night after, he found him there already when he came back from a spot of light reconnaissance, reading through some of Westbrook's papers. The next, he was in the dining room they'd converted into Priwen's general sleeping quarters, bandaging one of the women's sprained ankle. The next, some of the others had set up one of the formerly grim treatment rooms down in the cellars as an _actual_ treatment room. He found Reid there, stitching up a gash in one of the men's wrist. 

"Was that a bite?" McCullum asked, as the patient made his way away. 

"Yes," Reid replied. He turned and hopped up onto the treatment table to sit there, off his still somewhat unsteady feet. "But it was a particularly vicious stray cat, not an Ekon." 

He watched Reid pause for a long moment and then stand up again to wash the stray blood from his hands. He did so thoroughly, meticulously, then patted them dry on a towel. 

"Not tempted?" McCullum asked. 

Reid glanced at him, questioningly, and he nodded to the slightly bloody sink. McCullum saw the look on his face change, how he ran his tongue over his teeth under his top lip. 

"I'm tempted," Reid replied, levelly, though his tone sounded a fraction tense. "Always." Reid's gaze dropped to the side of McCullum's neck, just over his pulse where he knew Reid could see it beating, and a shiver ran through him, starting at his shoulders and ending directly in his balls. Then Reid's gaze came back up to his face. He leaned back against the sink, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, neatly. "However, at this particular moment my blood is approximately ninety percent yours. If I'm ever going to exercise any self-control, I'd say that moment is now." 

The problem was, that didn't really help matters because McCullum wasn't sure that Reid's estimate was in any way inaccurate. There wasn't much blood left inside Reid, but most of it was probably his. 

"I'm afraid I can't give it back no matter how hard you stare," Reid said, and McCullum didn't say he was actively considering the opposite - he was considering giving him more, because maybe then he'd feel like his debt to the fucking leech in his house had been repaid. He just sat himself down on the same high stool where the cat-bitten guardsman had until recently been sitting, and he started rolling up his sleeve. 

"You can draw some, yes?" he said, holding out his arm. "Fuck knows how many scars I'm going to have when this is done." And Reid frowned at him, just fleetingly, before he gave him a curt nod and went to find a needle. 

Honestly, he'd hoped that making the process something medical might help, but it didn't. Reid's fingers on his skin and the pinprick of pain at the crook of his arm didn't feel impersonal, nor did watching as Reid drew maybe a tablespoon of his blood out through a tube into the bottom of a shiny glass beaker. He felt Reid press his thumb where the needle was and pull it out, press a piece of cloth there and take his hand to guide him into holding it in place to stop the flow. He saw him step away and pick up the beaker. 

He didn't actually intend to watch him, but he did watch. He watched him raise the beaker to his lips and tilt it back and it was gone in a flash, in a second, not even a mouthful, and McCullum wondered what kind of fucking iron self-control Reid needed not to lick the glass clean right in front of him. He didn't, though. He just put the slightly bloody beaker in the sink, spent a moment licking his teeth clean with his eyes averted, and then looked back at McCullum with a flush in his cheeks that he knew was his own blood. 

"Thank you," Reid said. 

"Don't mention it," McCullum replied, and when it looked like he might speak again he added, "No, _really_. Don't mention it." Because the last thing on earth that he needed then was a discussion of how he tasted, or how how grateful Reid was that he'd saved his leechy life.

Reid nodded and wiped his perfectly clean mouth with his fingers. And McCullum went back to work, though he was unsurprised to find he was too fucking distracted to do much of anything that night at all. 

Over the days that followed, Reid used the downstairs treatment room as his office; with Nurse Crane's clinic further away now from where they called home, all the Priwen in the house wanted to see the doctor for their ailments, and McCullum let them even though he wanted to tell them no. He wanted to tell them not to trust him, not like they'd all apparently started to - just because he was there with them under the same roof, living with them for whatever that meant, that didn't make him safe, though he supposed really, no one there was. Nice people didn't flock to the Guard of Priwen, after all, and if any of them was guilty of placing too much trust in Reid then he was, first and foremost. The way they were basically sharing a bedroom it was difficult to tell the others, _by the way, don't trust a word he says_.

Over the days that followed, sometimes he met Reid in the library or in Westbrook's study, reading. Sometimes, they sat together like they'd done sometimes before, just usually in Reid's office back at Pembroke, going through information that might help them on a hunt. He asked Reid if he'd try mesmerism on the hostage Albertians they were still keeping in the house, a luxurious existence by all accounts even if it was captivity, and then he watched as he failed - not enough blood, he supposed, and that temptation to give him more reared its ugly head again. He pushed it down and at the end of the night, in bed, with Reid there just the other side of the bedroom wall, he examined that thought more carefully. He examined it with his underwear pushed down over his hips and his cock firmly in hand. Frankly, in the month that had passed since Reid's retrieval, his genitalia had been suffering more abuse at his own hands than it had in the whole year prior.

Reid helped them make sense of papers that led to stray Albertians, but not to Westbrook. He helped them make sense of the servants' payroll, too, and dealing with the club's butler who definitely drank a bit too much but whose help they required in order to keep up appearances. MCullum took a letter to Reid's own butler, too, and to the hospital, did it himself like the leech's fucking errand boy just like he had the first time, back when he'd still been missing - he'd made up a story, travelling or some such shite, sabbatical, that kind of thing, only this time the words were Reid's and not a half-careful forgery. And when he got back, he found him sitting at Westbrook's desk with a notebook open on the top. 

"Anything good?" he asked, by which they both knew he meant _anything useful?_ not _have we found the next Charles Dickens?_

"Westbrook's notes on the dissections," Reid said, then he smiled tightly. "His notes on what he did to me." He closed the notebook with a snap. He sat back, and McCullum couldn't help but feel like Reid seemed he belonged there, in that posh club with his posh clothes and his toff accent, in ways he never would himself. He couldn't help but feel that after weeks of unrest, the staff that they'd kept on felt settled when they saw him, in his clothes McCullum had retrieved from his house in the West End, letting himself in with a key for once and not with the use of a handy lockpick, or a brick. "They were alive when he started, you know. They weren't at the end."

"Was he planning the same for you?"

"That seems likely, yes."

McCullum didn't say what he was thinking as he leaned there against the closed study door. He was thinking they'd find Westbrook and stop his little forays into Ekon vivisection, yes, but mostly he was thinking he was glad he hadn't found Reid cut open on one of those damned tables in the cellar. He felt bad enough slowly feeding him back to health, slowly enough that it wasn't affecting himself too badly but enough that they were seeing Reid very steadily improve. Another week or so and he'd likely be well enough to go home, or at least back to work at the hospital, though McCullum half hoped he'd choose to stay with them. With _him_. Fuck. He still wasn't sure how things had come to this, imagining his life - Priwen's life - in the company of a bloodsucking leech.

"You know, I can hear you," Reid said, at last, the first to break the stretching silence. He turned the notebook over in his hands as he studiously didn't look at him. "In bed. I might be deficient in numerous other ways at this moment in time, McCullum, but I still have excellent hearing." 

McCullum frowned. His insides twisted. His blood ran cold, then boiling fucking hot. 

"Most people would politely pretend they hadn't heard," he said.

"I wondered if perhaps my being able to hear was the point." Reid set the notebook down. He rested his hands on top of it and looked up at him across the room. "Or am I wrong about that?" 

He wasn't wrong. He wasn't _entirely_ wrong. He hadn't thought Reid could hear, given his current condition, but that didn't mean he hadn't imagined he could. Fuck, he'd lain awake near dawn and thought about Reid in his bed in the dark in the next room, through the door that opened into his, the door that was just a few feet away from the foot of his bed. He'd pushed the sheets down and stripped off his underwear and spread his thighs out wide, he'd rubbed his hands into the creases at the tops of his legs as he closed his eyes and let his cock get hard. He'd imagined Reid hearing how his breath hitched, how his pulse raced, how his fingers wrapped around his cock and stroked. He'd imagined him opening the door and seeing him like that, naked, back arched, knees wide, how he'd look at him, dark and sharp and hungry. He'd just never quite got past that part. And he hadn't been giving him some kind of sign. He hadn't been giving him some kind of _show_ , though apparently he had been.

He didn't answer. He wasn't sure how to answer without denying it - which just wasn't true - or saying more than he wanted to to someone he couldn't have that kind of interest in, even if he sometimes let himself fantasise about it. He frowned, and he turned and he walked out of the room and he left Reid there, with that notebook about his own fucking torture on the desk under his hands and the stirrings of an erection between his thighs. He went upstairs, though he knew Reid would have to come in through his room to get into his own, assuming he came up at all and didn't choose to sleep down in the cellars in some plot of sensible avoidance. He locked the door so he _couldn't_ come in and he rested his head against the back of it, knocked his forehead against it almost hard enough to bruise, bared his teeth, felt like fucking shouting, but what he did instead was shove his trousers down over his hips and kneel on the edge of the mattress. His boots dangled over the edge and his shirt was shoved up underneath his arms and he stroked himself because fuck, it wasn't like there was anything else he could do to fuck it up much further. 

Someone tried the door - it had to be Reid, but he kept on going. 

Reid knocked. Reid said, "McCullum, this is ridiculous. Open the door." He didn't open the door; he leaned forward, on his knees and one hand, head hanging forward as he stroked himself harder. 

"McCullum, I can _hear you_ ," Reid hissed, at the far side of the door, and McCullum supposed that was at least partially the point of this disaster of a thing that he was doing. He leaned down lower, dropped onto his free forearm, pressed his head down hard against it and rocked his hips till he was basically fucking his own hand. And then the lock popped. The door opened and then closed again in short order, and McCullum stopped, with a lump in his chest that he couldn't identify as anger or frustration or something else again. 

He turned. He sat there on the edge of the bed with his cock standing up hard between his thighs and Reid's eyes on him in the lamplight. He sat there, Reid's gaze flickering between his eyes and the tip of his cock. 

"Oh God," Reid said, leaning back heavily against the door, like what he'd imagined with only the sound to spark his imagination hadn't quite prepared him for the reality that waited there. So McCullum thought what the hell, and he pulled off his shirt. He kicked off his boots. And he might have done something ridiculous to follow that, but the overwrought leech at his bedroom door passed out in a heap on the floor, just like that. Frankly, it was something of an anticlimax.

Instead of fucking him, McCullum hauled Reid through into his own room and laid him out there on the bed. Then he went back out to his own bed and let his ridiculous erection fade. It seemed like the thing to do, if anything.

His life was sincerely fucked up. And he'd have liked to have blamed the Albertians, but he was fairly sure it was all his own fault.

\---

When he woke next, Reid was already out of his room. That might have been some kind of small mercy.

He was in Westbrook's study when he found him, accidentally because fuck looking for him, reading the damned notebook again. McCullum left him there before he could look up and see him, though he supposed he already knew he was there; he had work of his own to do, chasing a lead on a metalwork company who might have dealt with the Albertians on the contract for their second cage. It came to nothing but three more leads, of course, and McCullum detailed his two lieutenants to take one each, leaving the last for himself; he'd look into the Limehouse company the next night, or go have a word with Jessica, maybe spend an hour with one of her lads and try to put the damned leech out of his mind. Sometimes the best thing about Jessica, aside from the fact that one leech policing her own was easier to keep tabs on than some kind of new pretentious coven, was the fact she was discreet. He couldn't fuck around with anyone from inside Priwen, after all, so a few coins when he had them for a bit of rough trade solved the problem. For a while, at least.

He didn't get the chance, though. In the morning, before dawn, he went upstairs sometime after Reid did. He stripped down to his underwear and slipped into his bed and he thought maybe Reid wasn't there, maybe he was downstairs in the cellar on his shitty hospital bed trying to avoid him or he'd found another room, or left. But then the door to Reid's room opened and there he was, barefoot, stripped to the waist like he'd been that night they'd taken him, the silver collar still around his neck. Fuck, McCullum had forgotten about it. And Reid, fucking leech, bastard fucking leech, hadn't taken it off. 

"Reid, what are you doing here?" he asked. 

"Well, we were... _interrupted_ ," Reid replied. He made an awkward face as he leaned against the door frame. "But it's been a long night. I should really lie down." 

McCullum threw back the sheets. He patted the space beside him on the mattress with a dose of good old belligerence, not entirely sure he believed Reid would take him up on the offer, though when Reid actually did come toward the bed he had to admit that, well, Reid had been the one who'd suggested it. He watched him stretch out there, on his back, uncertain, and McCullum pushed himself up to straddle his hips. He spread his hands on Reid's cold chest and pressed down with his hips and felt Reid start to stir against him. But that didn't seem quite right, he thought; he moved aside, pulled off his underwear, then pushed Reid down onto his bare stomach. He wrenched Reid's trousers down around his knees and straddled the back of his thighs instead. He palmed Reid's cheeks apart, considered leaning down to tongue his hole, then changed his mind. Instead he told him, "Open your mouth." 

He did. When McCullum leaned forward and reached one hand forward to Reid's mouth, it was open. He ran his forefinger over Reid's tongue, over his teeth, gritted his own and then pressed his fingertip to the tip of one fang. He felt it bite in. He heard Reid groan. And then he pulled back his hand and parted Reid's cheeks and fuck, he dripped his blood against his hole, squeezed his finger to make it well up all the faster, used the pad of his thumb to smear it there against him. Reid shifted against the bed, and McCullum understood he was hard, too, rubbing down against the mattress, reacting to the smell of the blood in the air and McCullum's own arousal. And fuck, it was a terrible idea, but somehow that didn't stop him, just like it never had before. He leaned forward, leaned down, his weight pressing him down, reached his forearm around in front of Reid's fucking leechy face and told him, "Bite me." 

"McCullum?"

"Jesus Christ, Reid," he said. "Bite. Don't drink. You understand?"

He bit him. Unsurprisingly, it hurt. The blood flowed, but Reid didn't drink it. He just made a pained noise, frustrated and aroused, as McCullum let his arm bleed all over his own cock and down between Reid's cheeks. It was the stupidest thing he'd ever done in his life and he knew it even then, while he was doing it, but fuck if he could stop and he couldn't have said why - maybe he'd come to the end of his tether, the end of his frayed rope, four months of guilt then a month of shame and an investigation going nowhere fast, with a leech in the next room who he'd started seeing as a person. Maybe it was all the things he'd sold, and the things he'd done to keep food on their tables, and his own clouded fucking judgement that had led the object of his untoward affections into greater danger than he'd realised. Or maybe it had just been a really long time since he'd had anyone to share his bed, so long that an Ekon would do.

Whatever the reason, he pushed the head of his cock down, against Reid's blood-slicked hole. He pushed against him, the tip of his cock to his tight rim. He pushed _inside_ him, slowly, feeling him stretch, feeling him twitch tight and then relax around his length. And fuck, he was cold inside, cold like the rest of him, stealing all the heat from in McCullum's body directly through his cock, but that didn't seem to matter now that he was in him. He slipped his hands to Reid's sides, to his ribs, holding tight as his blood turned Reid's skin slippery. And he fucked him, in hard thrusts, his rhythm slow, the friction almost painful as his damned head reeled. He fucked him while Reid groaned into his pillow and ground his arse against him, doing what he could without just passing out again. He'd never had a leech before. Before Reid, he'd absolutely never wanted to. 

When he came, his fingers dug into Reid's skin, smudging him with blood. When he pulled out and tugged Reid up onto his knees, he found him still hard. The damned silver chain hung down over Reid's chest and McCullum wrapped it tight around his bloody palm, pressed his chest against his back and brought his bleeding forearm up right in front of Reid's face. He knew what he was doing, he told himself, as he pressed his softening cock to the small of Reid's back and held the chain tight, his mouth by the crook of Reid's neck. He told himself he wasn't dicing with death when he said, "You can drink this time," the he knew that he wasn't. He told himself half the thrill wasn't knowing that Reid would stop when he told him to. He told himself he wasn't just like the fucking Albertians.

Reid made a low, bruised sound as he brought up both his hands and took McCullum by his wrist and elbow. He fit his teeth to the bleeding marks that he'd already made so that he wouldn't leave more, and then he drank. This time, it was definitely more than a tablespoon. It was enough that the change in Reid was very nearly instantaneous.

"Stop," he said, when he started to feel lightheaded, and, slowly, Reid stopped. He hadn't noticed when Reid had come, semen on his bedsheets along with the blood. McCullum lay down, dimly aware he was still bleeding, dimly aware of the fact that Reid bent his head to kiss him, dimly aware of the blood on Reid's tongue, on his teeth, in his mouth, thick and sweet and sickly, how he kissed him back with his fingers twisted tight into Reid's hair. He was dimly aware of the silver chain around his hand and Reid's mouth against his neck, his lips against his pulse, his _teeth_ there, but he didn't bite. McCullum knew he wouldn't, with a certainty that scared him.

"Is this what it means to be your pet Ekon, Geoffrey?" Reid asked, his voice so low and smooth and hot despite the chill his body sent right through him that McCullum shivered with it. "Is this what you want from me?"

And no, _no_ , that wasn't what he wanted. That wasn't what he'd intended. But his own stupid fucking blood loss took him straight into unconsciousness before he could say anything at all, just latest in a long line of mistakes he'd made. 

When he woke, his forearm was neatly dressed. The bed was freshly made beneath him. The silver collar sat there on the dresser, and Reid was gone. 

\---

It's been another four months since that night. The irony of timing isn't lost on him.

They haven't avoided each other, not really. Their paths have crossed every now and then; Reid has come to the clubhouse in Bloomsbury, where he keeps his treatment room neat and clean and tidy and fully stocked; McCullum has visited Pembroke, taken him all of Westbrook's papers now he's sure there's nothing left that Priwen can use, brought him back his coat though it was in a far shabbier condition than when he'd first borrowed it. Reid smiled wryly at that, distantly, and told him to keep it, so he has. It's been warmer than his own against the London winter chill, and he can't say he's not thankful. What he can say, though, is of all the mistakes he's made over the years, fucking up with Reid is one of his biggest regrets.

They haven't avoided each other, but they've avoided a certain topic. Tonight, though, they found Thomas Westbrook living in another fucking house in Bloomsbury, as if they should have known, and he was no match at all for Jonathan Reid at his full power; Reid looked into his eyes, into his fucking _blood_ , and he made him tell his new pet Ekon all about the things he'd done and planned to in the future. They watched that Ekon tear his master limb from limb, then McCullum put a crossbow bolt into the Ekon's heart. McCullum couldn't say he felt too sorry for him, for either of them. And now, they're alone in the aftermath, back at Priwen's base. They're back in McCullum's room.

The room is more McCullum's now than it ever was; there are weapons strewn across the dresser in what looks like disarray but is closer to organised chaos, papers, books, and his old scarf, hanging from the mirror on the dressing table, still stained with Reid's blood. He keeps telling himself he'll burn it, but the time's just never come. Then, next door, through the open door, there's the room where Reid used to sleep and where McCullum's sometimes found himself, just sitting on the bed as he contemplates what's led him here or naked, stretched out, imagining the leech is there. Once upon a time, he'd thought the mixed up, churned up, fucked up desires he had would go away if Reid did. Since then, he's been proved completely wrong.

"I have something for you," Reid says, and McCullum frowns at him as he produces a knife from his inside pocket, over his cold leech heart. When he comes closer, when he hands it over to him, it's an easy thing to recognise; McCullum sold it once, to pay for food, and before it was his it was his brother's. Reid must have found it, bought it, kept it for him. He's not sure what that makes him feel, but it makes him feel something.

"How long have you had this?" he asks. 

Reid arches a brow. "Some time," he says. "I thought now was fitting." Now that matters with Westbrook are settled, McCullum can't say he's wrong.

And what he does next it rash. It's reckless. It's everything he trains his people not to do. Once he's slipped the knife into his pocket, he goes toward the leech who's in his room, he steps up close and takes him by his flawless fucking waistcoat. He pulls him in and, with one last hard look, he kisses him on his damned leech mouth. He kisses him hard, fingers in his hair, and Reid, in a surge of something almost human, meets him there in it.

It's different this time to how it was before, and not just because Reid's no longer weak. Reid's himself again, cutting and sincere, so caring to his patients that it almost makes McCullum sick, using a gun and a sword though he has powers that put most other leeches to shame, but that's not it. He brought Reid here because he trusts him, and he's sick to death of trying to pretend he doesn't. Even as that surge of Reid's humanity subsides and it's his Ekon side that pushes him against the wall, that pins him there, that grazes his throat with the points of his teeth, he trusts him. He's taken him some time to understand that that's not weakness. There's nothing weak about either of them.

"Ask me to stay," Reid says, his voice low, almost against his mouth. 

"Stay," McCullum replies, and it's obvious he means it. 

"Ask me to go to bed with you," Reid says, and this time his voice is strained with want. This time his cock his hard against McCullum's hip. 

McCullum laughs, breathless. "Do I have to ask?" he says. And the bed's not far away at all.

Once they've undressed, Reid's expensive clothes strewn here and there across McCullum's floor, he tells Reid to fuck him and he takes no persuasion. He has him on his back, the angle awkward but between Reid's strength and McCullum's bloodymindedness, they make it work. And this time there's no blood streaming from his forearm like the pages of some old penny dreadful, no bedsheets like a murder scene, just Reid's thick cock inside him, so cold it makes him shiver down his spine as he wraps his legs around his waist. There's Reid's steady hands against his skin and his red eyes above him that say he's killed, and the scars that line McCullum's forearm telling tales of a life he saved. As Reid fucks him, his thrusts deep and hard, he sees no reason to regret that.

When Reid comes, he's still inside him, not breathless because he needs no breath but the sound he makes is all too human. When McCullum comes, it's over Reid's hand, breathless and still fucking himself on the length of Reid's thick cock. And when Reid pulls out, he stretches out the next to him, his body pale and tall and still except his eyes studying his face like he imagines he'll be told to leave though he was asked to stay.

"If you're staying there, I'll need another blanket," McCullum tells him, and Reid chuckles because they both know he's cold. He fetches him another blanket, naked and not quite as self-conscious of that fact as McCullum had imagined. As Reid lies back down and turns out the light, McCullum lets himself consider what else he's yet to find out.

Tonight, they put an end to Thomas Westbrook and McCullum can't think of a single thing to say. Apparently, Reid can't either. 

But Reid kisses him, in the dark, all sharp teeth and promise, then they lie down to sleep. And McCullum thinks that's eloquent enough.


End file.
